After a year away at
Gateshead the Turner Prize annual award for contemporary British art returns
for its 28th year at London’s Tate Britain.
I last saw the Turner
Prize in 2005 when it was won by Simon Starling who exhibited a shed which was
turned into a boat and then back into a shed again. That year I wanted the
painter Gillian Carnegie to win and in the years that proceeded, although I
never visited the Turner Prize exhibition I still closely followed its winners
and nominees with great interest. Since then after studying art for six years
it no longer bothered me that the artists I picked seldom won the prize, I
simply liked the debate and sometimes even the controversy the prize caused
amongst artists, critics and the public alike. With that in mind, I took the
opportunity this year to visit the Turner Prize in person.
Selected by directors
from British art galleries and institutions the 2012 nominees are; Spartacus
Chetwynd with a canvialesque live performance piece, Luke Fowler with a film
exploring the ideas and legacy of psychiatrist R D Laing, Paul Noble with a
series of large pencil drawings depicting manmade landscapes and Elizabeth
Price with an immersive digital video montage featuring footage of a fire that
broke out in a Woolworths store in 1979.
Chetwynd’s Turner
Prize piece is bonkers and to quote one Guardian reviewer is, “Like being hit
over the head with a pig’s bladder.” Ha, ha, so true but that is what is so
wonderfully refreshing about it too. One of the first live performance based pieces
in the Turner Prize’s history and set in its own bizarre low budget, sellotaped,
painted and glued world of amateur looking stage and costume design. Although
it is exactly the amateur looking nature of the set that is worthy of applause
as it goes against the grain of the slickness of the professionalised art
world. It also helps dissolve the barrier between audience and the performance
as there is no clear boundary as to where the stage begins and ends. As
Shakespeare famously wrote, ‘All the World’s a stage,’ so if you are Chetwynd
why not make the entire gallery space you’re stage? Previous work from Chetwynd
has been based on the Wicker Man, carnivalesque and draws inspiration from the
work of film directors such as Ed Wood who were celebrated for being ‘terrible’
movie makers. Oddly, I wasn’t that intrigued by the sort of funny but carefully
choreographed performances themselves and the characters that animated them.
The storytelling, ‘something to do with a slide, some eggs...who knows..’ was
lost on me but I was engrossed in the ‘world’ that it was set in and think that
with all sincerity there is something great about creating something that is so
bad and doing it so well.
Fowler’s 90 minute
long film documentary about the life of psychiatrist of R D Laing has echoes of
John Akomfrah’s film about Stuart Hall that I recently saw at the Liverpool
Biennial. Both present the more personal lives of the men they portray and
Fowler’s film shows and I quote, ‘the relationships between individuals and how
society changes through time’. But that’s exactly the point, that I didn’t
really quite get the point. I don’t know anything much about Laing and really
struggled to endure the full length of the film that when I saw Akomfrah’s,
whilst I was again ignorant to who Stuart Hall is, I was held by the imagery
and storytelling to want to learn more. It feels unfair to compare Fowler in
this way as hearing and looking at some of his other work, like some shorts he
made for Channel four, actually look really interesting, I just feel like the
piece shown here wasn’t doing it for me.
My two favourite
artists nominated this year, however are Paul Noble and Elizabeth Price.
Noble’s drawings are as subversive as they are huge and fill up most of the
gallery wall. For their size they are extremely well drawn and executed and it
is easy to get lost looking at the tiny details of pots, plants and phallic and
excrement looking shapes. Noble created the drawings as s series , ‘Nobson
Newtown’ and are based on creating city/landscapes out of a type font called
Nobson. They are obviously not without humour and I think if anyone can make
drawings of turds that capture and invite so much scrutiny and interest then
that is a feat worth credit.
However, Elizabeth
Price’s digital film titled, ‘The Woolworth’s Choir of 1979’ would be without
doubt the one I’d put my money on to win. The influence of conceptual artist
Barbara Kruger’s advertising imagery of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s seems very
evident in Price’s digital montages particularly in the use of black, white and
red echoing tabloid newspapers that Kruger and Price both used in their work. A digital collage of media-like text, wording
and imagery is cleverly edited to create multilayered meanings to existing and
edited footage. In this case stock footage from news reports/interviews from a
fire that broke out in a Woolworths department store in Manchester in 1979 and
imagery from churches that reads more like a controlled PowerPoint presentation
are fused harmoniously together alongside an accompanying finger clicking and
Shangri-Las between each image. It creates new meaning that holds you in the
same way that punchy advertising can but with more ups and downs as the pace
speeds up and then slows down to dramatic effect. After seeing her piece, ‘User
Group Disco’ at the British Art Show I was equally impressed and captivated
this time. Maybe it is because Price creates work in a media-style language
that we are all so familiar and used to that she draws her viewer in and really
does create something that is immersive and powerful.
Overall I admired the
diversity of work presented and it was particularly refreshing to see a live
performance piece and drawing based visual art be nominated. The work shown is
serious, satirical and thoughtful which also means there is a great demand and
expectation on its audience to engage and consider the work. For me, this makes
it all the more interesting and difficult if not a little bit pointless to pick
an overall winner. This year’s Turner Prize reminds us the important thing
about its legacy is not the prize itself but all of the art it presents.
If you are interested
to know the winner of this year’s Turner Prize it will be announced on Channel
four tomorrow, December 3rd at 07.30pm.
Or make your own
decision and see the exhibition itself at Tate Britain until 6th
Jan.
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